


Cheers Darlin'

by Godtiss



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-13
Updated: 2012-04-13
Packaged: 2017-11-03 13:43:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/381951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Godtiss/pseuds/Godtiss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sebastian Moran has his orders.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cheers Darlin'

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a song prompt on tumblr for Cheers Darlin' by Damien Rice.

Sebastian Moran is well acquainted with a range of emotions.

His personal favourite is euphoric joy - the rush of adrenalin when his finger tightens on the trigger, the thrill of satisfaction after a commendable kill, the knowledge that his reward for a job-well-done will be short in coming. He is good friends with triumph.

He has come to find he doesn’t particularly care for disappointment, fear, doubt, irrational anger at the one human on the planet that is more than just a walking target. The one who is strictly off limits – his own rule, not an order. Seb likes waking up in the morning knowing that Jim is a text message, a call, a road, a glance away.

Seb does not like unknown gunshots echoing across rooftops as he crouches in the stairwell, gun trained on the temporal lobe of the army doctor across the street. He likes it even less when the silhouette of the detective appears on the rooftop, and Jim’s does not.

But he has his orders. 

Sherlock Holmes dies. 

John Watson lives another day. 

Seb packs his tripod haphazardly, dismantling his gun with less care than he normally pays his instruments. He stashes his bag in a disused cupboard and is out onto the street in ninety seconds flat, ignoring the small crowd gathered around the bloodstains on the sidewalk, the crumpled doctor with the glazed eyes and blank expression that almost mirrors the corpse at his feet. He trots along with the stretcher, bends to lift the broken detective. No one questions his presence.

The trill of accomplishment doesn’t quite echo the one he’d have felt had he made the kill himself, but he knows that Jim will be pleased. Seb reaches down, wraps a hand around the cooling wrist, counts in time with his footsteps as the stretcher is swept off into the heart of the hospital. 

No pulse. 

Jim knew what he was doing.

Sherlock Holmes’ body goes left. Seb goes right, finds the stairs and takes them two at a time to the roof. He throws open the door, mouth stretched wide in a secret smile-

-and freezes.

Sebastian Moran does not particularly care for disappointment, fear, doubt, irrational anger at the one human on the planet that is more than just a walking target. He suddenly and unpleasantly finds that it’s possible to feel all of those traitorous emotions at once.

But only when he’s looking upon the pale form of Jim Moriarty, whose brain matter is floating about the puddle of blood pooled around his head, the ghost of his last mocking grin still curling his lips.

Seb isn’t aware of the bark of laughter that escapes his lips, laced with desperation as he takes a halting step forward. Jim’s eyes stare upwards, as lifeless as the rest of him. For the second time in five minutes, Seb wraps his fingers around a pale wrist, feeling for a pulse. Only this time he wants to find one.

He’s used to getting what he wants, eventually. 

It doesn’t change the fact that Jim’s blood is soaking into his shoes as he sits back on his heels, running a hand over his face and through his hair. 

Seb is familiar with jealousy and hatred. He has never felt them as strongly as he feels them for Sherlock Holmes, whose own corpse is only a few floors below. Whether Jim died by his own hand or not, Seb doesn’t care to find out (he’s afraid of the answer, doesn’t want to know, stop it Jim this isn’t funny anymore) but the fact still remains. Seb is crouching next to the body of the one human who was more than just a walking target, with the knowledge that the bastard isn’t going to jump up cackling at the look on Seb’s face.

And Sherlock Holmes killed him. 

Jim died because the detective had no choice but to do the same. Because Jim had willed it so. 

He’d killed himself, and the great Sherlock Holmes hadn’t been smart enough to outwit him. Hadn’t been smart enough to save them both.

Seb hates them.

He stands, spares one final glance for the best and wisest man he had ever known. He pulls out a cigarette, lights it, inhales deeply. The smoke clouds his vision for a moment, where he can almost fool himself into thinking Jim’s gaze flickered, eye closed in the parody of a wink but when Seb looks again, he is exactly the same. Unmoving. Blank.

Seb huffs a quiet breath, flicks the ash from his cigarette to float with the bits of brain and skull in the blood collected at his feet.

“Cheers, darlin’.”


End file.
